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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/25790629">a lot's gonna change</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/loamvessel/pseuds/loamvessel'>loamvessel</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Dead To Me (TV)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>80s AU, F/F, Road Trip, enemies (ish) to friends to lovers, freaks and geeks...inspired, there will be sex ive written all the chapters already don't you worry</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>In-Progress</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-08-08</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-09-04</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-05 09:01:25</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>6</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>13,121</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/25790629</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/loamvessel/pseuds/loamvessel</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>"She thought Jen was the kind of girl men would go to war for, like Helen of Troy, some siren for whom sailors would wreck themselves on the rocks. She was such an easy person to love, gorgeous and contradictory and unexpectedly kind, her mother’s loss lodged deep in her, proof of a rich groundswell of feeling she did her best to hide." </p>
<p>_</p>
<p>Jen, Judy, road trips, rock bands, magic mushrooms, and the tumult of unresolved love.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Judy Hale/Jen Harding</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>63</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>99</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. I'm With the Band</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>So, I have really no idea how to introduce this. I suppose this started as a Freaks and Geeks AU, and morphed into a general 80s AU with Freaks and Geeks elements due to not wanting to write teenagers having sex. So Judy and Jen are 20/21 here, and it's set in the early 80s, in the fictional town of Chippewa, Michigan. </p>
<p>Many thanks 2 the laguna beach retirement home and everyone on twitter for help with the title (which, by the way, comes from a Weyes Blood song that is VERY Judy), and to dear Tara for making my punctuation normal.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Just when she thought things were over with Nick, he invited her to band practice. </p>
<p>A very big part of her knew it was a bad idea, but she had heard a lot about Ted, Ted and his big house and his band and his rich mom and his crazy girlfriend, and she’d awaited the event with a twinge of morbid fascination, like preschoolers around a roadkill squirrel. Ted’s basement alone seemed to approximate the yardage of her own apartment, a homely beige two-bedroom she split with an ancient but genial ex-Deadhead named Abe. His instruments seemed almost too clean for rocker’s gear, and in her twitchy cannabinoid state (she’d smoked a little to take the edge off everything with Nick, and overshot) they seemed to be portents of something, hunching in their pristine cases like Shakespeare’s witches, or some henges of old. </p>
<p>Ted’s girlfriend was there, too, a lanky, haughty blonde girl Judy had never met. She ventured a hesitant smile and stuck out her hand. “I’m Judy. Nick’s…” </p>
<p>“Nick’s something,” he chimed in, and she felt a little flash of irritation at this show of ownership, some unplaceable annoyance that confused her. Technically, she wasn’t his anything—they had been on and off for weeks now. </p>
<p>“Jen,” said the girl measuredly, declining the outstretched hand. </p>
<p>“Oh, I know!” </p>
<p>It was obviously the wrong answer, and Jen gave her a little look. She dressed like a rocker’s girlfriend, in stringy jeans and beat up docs and Ted’s outsized leather jacket, but there was something clean and well-scrubbed about her that suggested she came from money. She looked like the girls Judy had known in high school, the rich girls in their big suburban houses she distrusted on principle but somehow always found herself trying to impress. </p>
<p>“Don’t take it too hard,” said Nick bracingly, when they’d managed to slip away. “She’s been weird since her mom died.” He had only been in the band for a couple months, but he had an air of confident authority, clearly keen to show her that he moved easily within this particular crowd. </p>
<p>“Well, it is her mom,” she rationed. “That’s a pretty big thing to get over, don’t you think? I don’t think you ever get over it.” Eleanor wasn’t even dead, and she still felt her absence every day, its dull ache a stone in her. </p>
<p>He just shrugged at that. “I’m just saying. I mean, she smashed a car windshield in with a golf club.” He used a tone which intended for confidentiality but instead approached a stage whisper, and Jen shot a look at them both. </p>
<p>The band was surprisingly passable, but when practice started she found herself watching not Nick but Jen, who had one doc-clad foot up on the spotless couch armrest, leg jouncing to the rhythm with an unexpected musicality. She appeared absolutely enthralled by the situation in front of her, as though five guys playing rock covers in a basement was the most exciting thing that had ever happened in her life, and maybe it was, but Judy doubted it. A girl like that...There was a restlessness to her, and some other ineffable quality that she couldn’t quite look away from. With her soft clear features and little snub nose she really was very pretty, and her long pale hair fell down her back like a girl in a song. </p>
<p>Jen chose that moment to glance up, and for a heartbeat their eyes met, her gaze not angry as it had been, but curious. Her blacklined eyes were a cool, bright color that could be blue or green, and Judy felt a little frisson in her, and she looked away. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>*** </p>
<p>Out of all the jobs she’s ever had, she doesn’t think waitressing is the worst. </p>
<p>She resented it, but there was something tender about showing up to work and caring for people, ferrying carefully their food and beverages, asking about their meal, those little acts of human kindness that she thought got lost among people far too often. She could be blasting granite or pasting stripes on the roads, or even be a child labourer in India—waitressing sucked, but it wasn’t so bad. </p>
<p>At least, that was what she told herself on her more reflective days, which somehow coincided with the days she showed up high with a half smoked blunt in her breast pocket for her break. Being high made her spill over with love for everyone, and that love extended towards even her customers. </p>
<p>It’s Chippewa, so everyone’s known her forever, and they call her Judy, darling and claim to have stories about her when she was small. They think it’s wonderful she’s going to college.  Even though she’s twenty, rather than the usual eighteen, it’s small-town Michigan, and she’ll forever be one of the ones who made it, the girl who got out. She’ll be like Jen, who studies dance in Chicago and comes back every Christmas with a new haughtiness and big-city clothes. Except Judy’s not going to come back. She’s going to run, and keep running forever. </p>
<p>Mostly, though, work just tired her out and made her feet hurt. </p>
<p>The day Jen Harding showed up had been one of those days—she’d been screamed at twice already, and she was hungover, the air blisteringly hot even with the noble efforts of the two wire-caged fans, rattling prehistoric contraptions whose assembly likely predated her birth. She liked summer, but the heat was so intense it made her nauseous, the vinyl booths hot to the touch, igneous as amusement park seats, the windows like a greenhouse. On the patio, someone’s kid had upended a plastic tumbler of orange Fanta all over the table, and she’d been the unlucky soul assigned to daub it up, right there in full view of everyone passing on the street. </p>
<p>Everyone, it turned out, including Jen Harding, who screeched up to the curb in a tiny little tank top, and hopped out, waving (somewhat paradoxically, she thought) like they’d been best friends since kindergarten. </p>
<p>“Um,” she said. “I have to tell you you can’t park here.” </p>
<p>Jen ignored that. “You’re Judy, right?”</p>
<p>She nodded warily. Jen’s shirt had ridden up the broad, flat expanse of her torso, exposing a good two inches of tanned stomach, and Judy kept her gaze fixed safely on the spot above Jen’s third eye. </p>
<p>“I haven’t seen you at band practice lately,” she said. </p>
<p>Perhaps she was hallucinating in the heat. “I’ve had to work,” she ventured lamely, which was only partially true. In fact, she’d actively stayed away, and the reason was twofold: one, she’d got the distinct feeling that Jen hadn’t liked her, and that she was the kind of girl who liked to stake out her territory, and Judy figured she’d do best to dodge that particular bullet. The other reason, which she told herself was more pressing, was because she had finally, after months of deliberation, gathered her courage to permanently and unequivocally break up with Nick. </p>
<p>Jen squinted at her. “Nick told me you guys broke up.”</p>
<p>Well. </p>
<p>“Yeah, that too.”</p>
<p>“It’s a shame. I mean, you can do whatever you want, but it would be nice not to be the only girl for a change.”</p>
<p>She nodded again, stupidly, and started stacking the plastic tableware. Jen picked up a cup and handed it to her with two fingers, a probable peace offering. It was damp, and sticky with Fanta, a half-inch of melted ice slumming it in the bottom. </p>
<p>“Um, don’t take this the wrong way, but I kind of got the feeling that you didn’t like....uh...me.”</p>
<p>It was the first thing she’d said that managed to get under Jen’s skin, and she looked sheepish. “My therapist says I need to open myself up to new experiences,” she said obliquely. Something about her tone told Judy this was as close to an apology as she was going to get. </p>
<p>“Your therapist? Oh, because—”</p>
<p>“Yeah, cause my mom died. Cancer, by the way. If you were wondering.”</p>
<p>Judy had, in fact, been wondering.  </p>
<p>“It took about ten years for her to die,” said Jen. “She kept getting better, and then getting it again. Anyways, what time do you get off? Five, six?”</p>
<p>“Five,” she said.</p>
<p>“You doing anything?”</p>
<p>She had been planning to drink a bottle of ten dollar wine in the bathtub, an arrangement she supposed amounted to a resounding no. She shook her head. </p>
<p>“Cool,” said Jen. “I’ll come pick you up. We can smoke a blunt and have girl time or something.” Jen stuck out her hand, and Judy realized she wanted her to shake. Jen’s hands were soft and broad, a little clammy from the heat, and her grasp was firm, and Judy felt something ripple through her; heatstroke, maybe. “Five,” Jen said, and then, as if there was anywhere else Judy could possibly be, “don’t forget.” </p>
<p>And then she was sauntering off again, hopping into her slick little car. It took, Judy thought, remarkable self-composure not to watch her walk away. </p>
<p>***</p>
<p>Getting into a car with Jen Harding seemed about equivalent to climbing in a tank with a viper, but there’s always been something a little off about Judy’s survival instinct. They got burgers, (for the munchies, Jen said, paying for everything with a brusque sweep of her hand), nail polish from the Perry (to cover up Jen’s bad pedicure) and then they hit the highway. Jen’s tastes ran surprisingly metal, even for a rock chick, and she spent the drive blasting Anthrax and exhibiting a prodigious display of road rage, and at moments Judy had feared, genuinely feared, for her life.</p>
<p>“The sunset’s nice here,” said Jen, when the car finally slowed. She had taken them off a nearly invisible exit, and now they found themselves on a quiet, tree-lined gravel road, a woody bluff of midsized hardwoods that overlooked the roofs of Chippewa in the valley below. It really was beautiful, but mostly Judy was just pleased to still be in one piece. Her tastes, she realized, decidedly did not run metal, and she was glad for a break from the Anthrax. </p>
<p>“Isn’t this a lovers lane?” She had a vague memory of coming here once with some high school conquest, a pushy but inexperienced boy who’d put his hand down her shirt. </p>
<p>Jen grinned, a little flash of teeth. “Don’t worry, I’m not going to sodomize you.”</p>
<p>A half-moon of bare skin shone between Jen’s clavicle and the shadowy rise of her breasts; if she were to be sodomized, Judy thought, she wouldn’t mind at all for Jen to be the one to do it. </p>
<p>“I’m not a queer, you know,” said Jen quickly, as if she had read her mind. </p>
<p>“Neither am I.” They all knew what gay people were, of course, but they had always seemed to her to be people from somewhere else, people who occupied a shadowy half existence, who lived in places she had never been and did things she could not name. Some of the more delicate-looking boys in high school got called fags, but that was more a catch-all term than one applied with any real verisimilitude, and she doubted she had actually met a gay person in her life. </p>
<p>The wind soughed mournfully through the trees, as though to affirm that it, too, was not queer, and Jen produced an expertly rolled spliff from her pocket and lit up. </p>
<p>“Ted and I came here a lot,” she said. “I couldn’t think what else to do. What do girls even do, anyways?” </p>
<p>Judy didn’t really have an answer to that. She’d been designated freakish since adolescence, and girl rituals were as big a mystery to her as they were to anyone else.</p>
<p>“We broke up, you know,” said Jen, undeterred by the lack of response; it had probably been a figurative question. Then as though there could be any doubt as to who we might be, she added: “me and Ted.”</p>
<p>“Did something happen?” </p>
<p>Jen shrugs. “I just wanted to. It’s ok, we break up all the time. But it always works out.”</p>
<p>“Us, too. I mean, me and Nick. But I think this time will be the last time.”</p>
<p>“Why?”</p>
<p>“Because I didn’t love him.” The words tumbled out without meaning to, but as soon as she spoke them she knew that it was true. </p>
<p>Jen tilted her head. “You’re a weird bitch, Judy Hale.”</p>
<p>“So I’ve been told.”</p>
<p>Jen seemed to think that was funny. She motioned for the joint back, took a giant hit, and closed her eyes. </p>
<p>“The thing about Ted,” she said, “is that he keeps telling me to get over my mom. And like, I get it, it’s been almost two years. But it’s like, it’s my mom, you know, not some cat lady grandma in Topeka, Kansas I only saw at Christmas. I saw her every day.” She rounded on Judy suddenly. “You don’t think it’s weird, right? That I’m still not over my mom?”</p>
<p>She shook her head. “I don’t. I think you’re probably never going to get over it.” Silence. “I, uh, lost my mom, too. So I’d consider myself an expert in the subject.” Technically it wasn’t a lie. </p>
<p>Jen was looking at her with a strange expression. “You know,” she said. “I think you’re the only person I’ve ever met who doesn’t spew absolute bullshit every time they open their mouth. That’s a compliment, by the way.”</p>
<p>“I know.” </p>
<p>Judy’s always been desperate for approval—it’s how she’s managed to survive—but there’s something about Jen’s approval that means so much more to her. Maybe because she’s tough, maybe because she’s so pretty, the prettiest girl in Chippewa, probably, although that’s not saying much, and the knowledge that Jen approves of her, that she maybe even likes her, glows in her like honey in her throat. </p>
<p>Jen gave her a little look, and for a moment their eyes met, and she again felt a moment of stillness, an absolute rightness in her like an eclipse, the planets clicking into place and blotting out everything else.</p>
<p>Jen broke the gaze and shook her head. “God, Judy,” she said, “sometimes I wish I was a lesbian.”</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Jen Harding is my Friend</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>thanks everyone for the lovely comments you left on the last chapter...I haven't got around to responding yet but they bring a beautiful energy to this space. </p><p>as always, thanks to tara for proofreading services!</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>“you’re so cool you’re so cool </span>
</p><p>
  <span>i’ll bet when you were born </span>
</p><p>
  <span>all the orange crush &amp; ne-hi soda </span>
</p><p>
  <span>bottles in the world fizzed over </span>
</p><p>
  <span>they wanna break yr heart </span>
</p><p>
  <span>but it’s made of blood &amp; tar </span>
</p><p>
  <span>you carry all that suffering </span>
</p><p>
  <span>like a gun between your arms—”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Nicole Dollanganger, </span>
  <em>
    <span>You’re So Cool</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <br/>
  <br/>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’m just saying,” said Jen. “Wouldn’t you feel a little weird? If your boyfriend fingers some Bambi chick at the laser dome, and now you’re gonna hang out for, like, the first time since you guys broke up, and guess what he suggests—the fucking laser dome. I mean, you’d think that’s weird, right?”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Totally,” she said. “He’s a fucking dick, Jen. You don’t need him.” Her tone was emphatic, and Jen looked mollified. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Exactly, Judy. Like, what if I have to sit in the seat he fingered her in. Can you imagine?” </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>She took a long drag on the straw of her spiked Diet Coke. “Plus, I don’t need Ted, I have you.” </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Judy tried to hide the little gush of emotion those particular words unpicked in her. How did Jen do it? The slightest hint of affection, and Judy wanted to curl up at her feet. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>She and Jen had been hanging out for about a week, but already the role of Jen’s best friend had become a full time occupation. She liked Jen, her dry, edgy little sense of humour she hadn’t expected, and that matched Judy’s own. Something about Jen’s casual abrasiveness seemed luxurious to her, she who was in the business of being amicable to everyone, and they seemed to feed off each other in equal measure—it was obvious Jen had wanted for a confidante for a long time, and Judy felt achingly protective. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Even so, though, the prospect of dinner at Jen’s house filled still Judy with a startling anxiety. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“It’s really, really not a big deal,” Jen had said. “He wants to meet all my friends—I think Pastor Wayne from the grief group told him to get more involved in my life.” She enunciated ‘Pastor Wayne’ in an acrid tone, dragging the vowels like a Californian; her father’s propensity for both Catholicism and what she termed ‘public access diet therapy’ embarrassed her. But Judy still found herself thinking uneasily about it. She liked Jen a lot, but she was the kind of girl who bought new jeans from the mall just to rip them up (this, she found, was the source of the pristine starched quality about her that Judy’d noticed the day they’d met). She had no idea just how terrifying the prospect of going to someone’s house could be. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Sure, it wasn’t like she’d never been to the rich part of town before—she'd spent many nights at Nick’s house for dinner—but that had been different. The Pragers made a comfortable living at a personal computing company in Detroit, but they were one of the few Black families in Chippewa, and they knew as well as anyone that money was no substitute for storied Anglo-Saxon pedigree. Jen, on the other hand, was descended from a noble clan of lawyers, accountants, and stay at home moms. The Hardings had practically come over on the Mayflower.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“So, Abe.” She broached the question carefully. “Suppose I had a question about rich people.” </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>It was Wednesday night, and she was chopping vegetables by the sink, while Abe read </span>
  <em>
    <span>Steppenwolf</span>
  </em>
  <span> in the kitchenette. He had a moderate case of arthritis, and elected to cover the grocery bill for both of them in place of culinary duties, an arrangement that suited them both; she loved cooking, loved the little tasks of caring for someone, and some of her favourite conversations between them had happened in that little kitchen. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Depends what you wanna know,” he said. “There’s a lot going on with rich people.” He turned down Hesse, a trace of humor in his voice. Abe had organized with the Jewish Labour Committee in the 50s, and she braced herself—albeit fondly—for another tirade against consumer culture and the relative vacuity of material goods. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>If it had been anyone else, the prospect of splitting an apartment with an elderly two time widower would have made her stomach roil, and when Abe had answered her ad for a roommate, she’d considered him only as a very last resort. But they’d gotten on immediately, Abe with his old road stories and laconic wit, and her with a life otherwise unmarked by any positive adult guidance, and she absorbed easily his lessons on matters of counterculture and the heart. She considered him an elderly version of the father she’d never had, and he dubbed her quirky, good hearted, like the granddaughter he never got to watch grow up. </span>
</p><p>
  
</p><p>
  <span>“I mean,” she said, “if you were going to dinner at a rich person’s house, what would you wear? Like, if I dress up, they might think I’m tacky or something, but if I dress down, they might think I’m cheap.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He considered that for a minute. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Are we talking upper middle class, here? Or are we talking Bill Gates?”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Upper middle.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Well, probably not that.” He inclined his head at her holey, stained deadstock army jacket, then caught her pained expression and softened. “It’ll be okay, Jude. This boy, whoever he is, is gonna love you.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“It’s not a boy.” She found herself blushing, the admission somehow embarrassing to her. “It’s my friend, Jen.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Oh?” he said. “Funny Jen? Jen who parks on the sidewalk and honks at you instead of ringing the buzzer like a regular human being?” </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Uh huh. The same.” In some act of cosmic sadism, she blushed inexplicably harder. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Well,” said Abe, “I think funny Jen is gonna love you too.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>***</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“You look nice,” Jen said, when she picked her up from the apartment. She’d gone for business casual, for want of any sartorial guideposts, and picked up some flowers from the Kroger to go with her good interview clothes. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Thank you,” she said. And then: “you don’t think the flowers are overkill, do you?”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Jen, too, seemed to be on her best behavior (although her preferred parking method was still putting on the blinkers and slamming at the horn, a choice that prompted a little eyebrow raise from Abe) and she waffled a little before relenting. “Well, I mean, it’s my dad. He’s been pretty depressed. He’s probably not even going to look at you. But it’s a really nice thought.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Jen’s assessment, it turned out, was entirely accurate, and Papa Harding (please, call me Robert, he’d said, with what was perhaps the most listless variation she’d encountered on that particular phrase) barely met her eyes as he dished out a pot roast in the giant, subarctic dining room. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“So, uh, Judy,” he said, when they were all settled. “My daughter tells me you’re in college.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>She nodded. “U of M,” she said. It was, like many of the lies Judy told, technically true.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Ann Arbor. Good city. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“That’s what they say.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Good football.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Come again?”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Good football, U of M. The Wolverines.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Of course, sir.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Please, Judy. Call me Robert.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Of course, sir. Robert.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Jennifer”—here he gesticulated vaguely towards Jen’s hemisphere of the table—“is in Chicago. Doing, ah, dance.” He paused, and seemed about to say something else, then thought the better of it. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Judy shot a look at Jen, who was staring very fixedly at her plate. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>There were a series of tenets Judy considered necessary for survival, and one of them was the knowledge that calling Jen “Jennifer” was enough to get you killed. But Jen hadn’t said a word in protest—if anything, she looked like she was trying particularly hard to disappear. Judy took her cue, and the three of them ate in strained silence. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Jen’s mother was from Chicago,” blurted out Robert suddenly from the head of the table—this, evidently, the thing he’d wanted to say before, and had held back. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Oh!” She tried her best to look interested. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“I suppose Jennifer already told you what happened.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Yes, sir. I’m very sorry, sir, for your loss.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He appeared not to hear her. “Well, she was very talented, and very beautiful. She looked just like Jennifer. She’s beautiful, don’t you think, Judy?”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>She looked up at Jen, who gave her a wan apologetic smile. Somehow there was a lump in her throat. “Yes sir,” she said. “Very beautiful.” </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>*** </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>It was the kind of thing they might have laughed at, if they were different people, but Judy didn’t see anything funny about it. They fled to Jen’s bedroom as soon as humanly possible, and Jen immediately flopped face first on the bed. Judy perched on the beanbag chair, a little stiff in her good slacks, and they marinated thusly, each aching with a wordless sympathy for the other. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Jen’s room was a strange mishmash of objects, a pastiche of angry monochrome and tasteful suburban pink—a beat up pair of pointe shoes adorning a shelf across a large photo of Siouxsie Sioux, and, as if to mediate the two, a very large signed poster of Gwen Verdon in Chicago in pride of place above the headboard. Normally she would have been interested in Jen’s room, in parsing the inner sanctum of her like a Tasseographer with her cup, but the meal had sapped all of the energy from her. Somehow, it had managed to become one of the most depressing moments in her reasonably depressing life, and it wasn’t even her mom that was dead. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Shit,” said Jen finally. “I’m so sorry you had to go through that, Judy. I’m so sorry.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>She went to say that it was fine, that it hadn’t been that bad, and felt absurd, and closed her mouth. “Is he always like that?”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Sometimes. But not usually around guests. I had no idea he’d do that, Judy, I’m so sorry.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>It wasn’t Jen’s fault, and Judy ached to tell her that. She’d had more than one uncomfortable experience where she’d brought a classmate over, and Eleanor had been in one of her moods. Once one of the kids had evidently reported back to their mother, who, even though she didn’t have much more money than them, had shown up with a care package, a cardboard box full of toilet paper and little packets of Lipton soup. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Jen,” she said. “It’s okay, I promise.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Thanks,” said Jen gruffly, and Judy thought her eyes were a little wet. She was trying admirably hard to put a good face on things and Judy wanted to take her in her arms and tell her that she didn’t have to pretend, that it was all ok.  </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>That was the night Jen danced for her. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>They’d flip-flopped for a while settling on a leisure activity—they absolutely had to do something, to extinguish the spectre of what’d happened downstairs from themselves, but what something proved to be a divisive question. Jen wanted to get drunk, Judy to get high, and they both thought it would be a good idea to sneak out at some point and do something they’d regret. Jen’s dad had been so lethargic at dinner that they doubted he would be much of a challenge, but Judy recalled an unfortunate incident where a kid from one of her homes had broken an ankle climbing out a one story window—a statistical near-impossibility, the physician had said—and then Jen started saying something about her tendons, and suddenly they were talking about dance. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Judy had taken a dance class precisely once in her life, on the dime of one of her richer foster families. She’d been glaringly old at fourteen, gangly and conspicuous among the nine year olds arrayed across the community center’s wheel-in barres, and she swore up and down that the experience scarred her for life. But she had always been fascinated by dance, which seemed, like the soccer team she’d joined in high school, one of the few ways she’d seen to be more than just a girl body. So she listens, a little enraptured and a little bit jealous, as Jen lights on such topics as backstage drama (there was a lot of it), calisthenics (annoying, but necessary), Merce Cunningham (she liked him, but not as much as Trisha Brown), and unitards (she considered them psychological warfare), and when Jen wants to show her the dance setup in the basement, she doesn’t need to be convinced. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>It seemed to bring Jen great relief to show Judy the rolling barre (she had a little flashback to her community center days) and the special floor, large squares of smooth black vinyl held together with tape, which apparently made it easier to spin. Or something. She listened, knowing Jen had held all this inside her for years (everyone wants to talk to me about cancer, they couldn’t care less about Pina Bausch), and glad to be the long awaited recipient. It wouldn’t have mattered if Jen was reciting any encyclopedia—whatever came out of her mouth made Judy want to listen. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Will you show me something?” she said. “Something that you did?”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Jen got a look in her eye. “Maybe,” she said. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“What are you gonna do?”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“I don’t know. Shut up and sit down, I’m thinking. “</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Judy didn’t want to risk sitting cross legged in the slacks, but she did shut up, and moved herself helpfully towards the corner of the room. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>And then, without preamble or music, Jen began to move. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Judy didn’t think she had ever seen another human move that way before. Jen’s movements were loose and fluid, yet also articulated, as if she were testing the limits of her body, rotating a hip socket, extending an arm. She didn’t move like ballerinas did—she flexed the sole of her foot, bent her limbs at their joints, and let gravity carry gestures to their conclusion. Judy stared. She had expected something a little corny, like tap dancing, something she knew probably took a lot of skill but was a little weird taken neat in someone’s basement. But she hadn’t even known people could move like that. It struck her that it had been years since she saw a girl her age moving in a purely athletic, exploratory way—they were all practised, over-rehearsed, always trying to make their body look a certain way or turn somebody on. This was something different.  </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Jen stopped. “I forget the rest,” she said, “but that’s what we did for the end of year performance this year.” She looked a little nervous, and Judy, with a bolt of shock, realized Jen was waiting for her approval. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Jen,” she said. “That was the fucking coolest thing I’ve ever seen.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>The effect was instantaneous; Jen beamed. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“This is what people are doing now,” she said excitedly. “I mean, it’s not just ballet and stuff. Like, this is new.” She looked flushed and happy, the agony of earlier comfortably in the past. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Wait, this is even cooler.” She grabbed her right leg, unfolded it, and stretched it over her head, so that her body arched like a bow and arrow, a long fluid line perpendicular to the earth. It was an impressive move, especially executed in high waisted jeans.  Judy tried not to stare too hard at her crotch. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Jen grinned at her. “That’s my party trick,” she said. She gave off an aura of undeniable pride, and Judy felt a surge of tenderness for her, this headstrong, contradictory girl. </span>
</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>1. was it weird that I had Abe as Judy's roommate? I wanted him in the story somehow, because he struck me as the only adult in the story (besides Jen) that Judy had a lasting positive relationship with, and it seemed totally normal that she’d just hang out with an 80+ year old. and according to google it's not unheard of for seniors to have roommates for companionship later in life. I'm probably the only person thinking this hard about this</p><p>2.  the dance Jen does for Judy is inspired by Trisha Brown's Watermotor (1978)</p><p>3. i'm on twitter @judyhalesimp if you wanna say hi!</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. The Centre Will Hold</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>disclaimer: most of the drug stuff in this is based on my own experiences (fbi, you didn't see this) so any glaring inaccuracies are likely due to me being a little lightweight. ha</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>It seemed like only a day ago she was meeting Jen Harding, and now she was tripping with her at some house party. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Jen, the acolyte, partook in her usual joint, passing it back and forth with Ted, who she’d evidently forgiven for the laser dome. Judy, the sage, downed half a gram of mushrooms. They held each other and giggled when they felt it start to hit.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Ted and Jen were becoming increasingly touchy with each other, and they absconded half an hour in, leaving Judy alone to hold onto the walls. She normally loved microdosing—it made her feel silky and relaxed, full of love for everyone, just like weed without the munchies. But tonight, most of the partygoers were unfamiliar to her, save Jen and Ted, and everything was giving her the impression of a nature documentary, where people moved slowly through the darkness of jungle or undersea, their feathered hair the plumes of some rare tropical bird or undersea molluscs with their gloaming chitinous shells, the blaze of cigarettes like lanternfish, fireflies, electric eels. She knew, objectively, that they were people, but there was something abstract and odd about it all, something she had never really noticed before. She was witnessing bizarre mating rituals whose intricacies she was not privy to, and whose cadences confounded her—these people were not her crowd, and she knew if she spoke, her language would annoy or confuse them. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>The percussive stylings of John Bonham hung over them all, reminding her of Nick, but Nick was noticeably absent from the occasion. Now she was sad. She liked Nick, who had a natural vivacity to him, his rock affiliations set off against his easy, charismatic vigor. He was tender, charming, and knew the right way to talk to women, ie., not weird or creepy about it, a relative holy grail among men of all walks of life. Things were mostly fine between them now, but he had taken the breakup hard, blamed himself, blamed his race, the fact he was one of the very few Black people in a town she’d auger clocked in at about 99% white, and she’d fought hard to convince him that it wasn’t any of those things. She just hadn’t loved him; the fondness she’d had for him when they first got together had diminished, not strengthened, with time, their personalities too dichotomous to justify another year of on-again-off-again tumult. So now she was alone again, a feeling that fell down on her like a well-worn coat. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>The shrooms intensified about an hour in, and she soon lost interest in the party. What she wanted was to lie down somewhere, and watch the wall coming up at her and slipping away. She tried one door—a closet. The next one divulged a couple—a blonde girl on top of a man with a hidden face, both of whom scrambled up to look at her. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>In her altered state it took her a moment to realize it was Jen and Ted. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>She blushed deeply, swaying a little in the doorway. Ted looked sheepish, but Jen seemed to find the whole thing uproariously funny. She giggled, snorted a little, and Judy found herself entirely unable to move, like a figure in the midst of one of those running dreams. Long seconds passed, </span>
  <em>
    <span>Start Me Up</span>
  </em>
  <span> by The Stones crashed in the background, and somehow Judy regained herself, wrenched herself away from the unfortunate tableau and lurched toward the Switzerland of the bathroom. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>***</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>She thought maybe she had gotten a little too high. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Her face seemed foreign to her, a round disc of a planet with its seams and crags, and she put her hand up to the mirror to steady herself. Her body did not seem to be her body at the moment. Like a photograph from a long time ago you look at and can’t fall into, and your face seems to be the face of a stranger, and you think, was that really me? Did I look like that, go there, do these things? She had read once about people who, no longer able to conjure up emotion at a parent or husband's face, became convinced that those persons were imposters, and that was how she felt. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>There came a knock at the door. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Just a minute,” she trilled, best as she could manage in her limited operating capacity. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“It’s Jen.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Oh.” She wasn’t sure she wanted Jen right now, what with recent events, but she didn’t have much of a choice. Jen had pushed the door open easily, surprising her—she thought she had locked it, but evidently she hadn’t. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“You okay?” Jen took her in. “Oh, you’re not okay.” </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“I’ve never shroomed at a party before,” she confessed, feeling embarrassed. “I usually just take them at home. I thought it...would make it feel more fun. But everything feels sinister now, like it’s rushing at me.” She fumbled for an explanation. “There are forces...in the corners. Don’t touch them. Don’t touch them! Jen! You have to stay in the centre.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Jen had a quizzical look. “Is that why you’re sitting on the sink?”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>She nodded. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Maybe we should take you home.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Vaguely, some non-functional part of her registered the conjoined subject—we—but she shook her head emphatically. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“I can’t—if I open the door I have to go by the corner. It’s so close! I can’t do it.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“What if I carry you?”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Carry me?”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Out the door. So the corners can’t get you. It’s only you they’re after, right?” </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>She thought about that. “Ok.” </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Jen took her in her arms and, with some difficulty, managed to hoist her off the sink, and immediately she was surrounded by Jen’s scent, a sweaty skunky cigarette smell, the little right hook of perfume underneath it all like a taunt, that note of femininity in all of Jen’s roughedged bravado like a bad girl who sleeps with teddy bears in the bed. Judy had never quite experienced this precise closeness before, the smell, the softness and heat of this particular human being, her mouth inches from the freckles on Jen’s neck, and she realized that, despite it all, there was a part of her that liked it very much. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>They made their way out of the bathroom like that, into the throb of the party and out into the cool air. Jen’s arms were strong and soft, and she felt safe, enwombed in their closeness. She was only vaguely conscious of being placed in a car, of being taken somewhere, of Jen driving, and then she was unlocking the door of her apartment, where Abe looked askance at them with a worried face, and Jen said, “she’s okay, just had a bad trip”—</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Then she was on her bed, which seemed an immense relief. Her bed! How had she never noticed what it did for her, it’s soft, deep, rooted nature like soil which kept her safe. She stretched her arms out and felt her body being pulled down, down into the earth. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Jen was moving around her room touching things, something that normally would have unsettled her, but this was Jen, and her contact made them dear. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“I knew you were a Deadhead,” she said. She had found the record collection. “Ted owes me twenty bucks.” She was somehow surprised to hear they had discussed her, a small revelation that burned itself into her like a star. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Abe got me...into it.” </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“You know, I kind of got that vibe from him.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“What vibe?” </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Oh, hippieish. Leave it to you to be roommates with a geriatric stoner.” There was a little bleed of tenderness in Jen’s voice, a teasing familiarity, and she spoke quickly as if to cover it: </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“What’s their best song?” </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Ripple,” she said, but lately the song she’d thought of most was Peggy-O, and the line about the yellow hair. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>She thought Jen was the kind of girl men would go to war for, like Helen of Troy, some siren for whom sailors would wreck themselves on the rocks. She was such an easy person to love, gorgeous and contradictory and unexpectedly kind, her mother’s loss lodged deep in her, proof of a rich groundswell of feeling she did her best to hide. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Ripple,” said Jen. Her lips popped the word, and she grinned. “Maybe I’ll listen to it.” </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“It’s on...American Beauty. You can...take my record...if you want.” The high was definitely manageable now, but her words still seemed to have little caverns in them, and she could see the little soundwaves in her mind, like mountains and lakes and rivers. They could really be something now she was high, not just little lines but a whole beautiful landscape, like looking at the wall as a kid and pulling out little patterns from the stucco, dogs and flowers and faces. Back when nothing was just what it was and everything was something else. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>That thought distracted her a bit, and she occupied herself for a while making little sounds and imagining what they’d look like. A tall sharp sound could be a tree, while an aaaaaaaaaaaah could be a valley. This was the part she loved about shrooms, the pleasant curiosity, drifting about from thought to thought like a plump and happy cloud. Maybe she should try painting right now—she knew she would make something good. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>She met Jen’s eyes, and the gaze was lucid and full of so much, and suddenly she needed Jen to hold her again, needed a font for all this tenderness that rushed in her. Jen was beautiful, and she had to always act so tough and strong. “I want to hug you,” she said. “Can I hug you?” </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Jen looked taken aback. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Why?” </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Because your mother died. And you’re...being brave.” </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>She thought Jen was going to lean forward and strike her, but she just shrugged and said, “okay.” </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>She waited. “You have to sit up, I’m not going to hug you like that.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Come on! It’s nice down here, the mattress is like...it’s like earth. You’ll like it.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“You’re just high, Judy,” she said, but she relented. She lay very slowly down on the bed, and Judy rolled over and put her arms around her. There was that smell again, the wonderful one from earlier that she loved. Her nose was in Jen’s hair. “You smell good,” she said. “I bet Jane Fonda smells like you.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Jen didn’t say anything to that. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Jane Fonda in Klute,” she added helpfully. “When she was braless and had that sexy little mullet.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Jen heaved out a little laugh, and then her body heaved again, and Judy realized suddenly that Jen was crying, closing her eyes and clinging to her, a situation she found herself wholly unprepared for. She stroked Jen’s back and murmured </span>
  <em>
    <span>it’s ok, it’s ok</span>
  </em>
  <span>, and Jen clung to her and sobbed harder, and they clung together, diversely unpossessed, as if two sole survivors of some dreadnought storm. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>They seemed to recover themselves around the same time, a fact Judy considered some variation in a cosmic miracle, coming back to her body as she felt the world refocusing around her, the malevolent presences abating. Jen, no longer sobbing outright, just sniffling a little, was her anchor, a line of warm, soft flesh whose proximity to her own body had somehow gone unnoticed until now. They had both passed through something and survived, and the thought of it filled with her with a deep tenderness. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“You okay?” she said. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Jen nodded, and sniffled a bit. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“You wanna talk?”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“No, it’s okay.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Thanks for saving me back there.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Jen shrugged a little, looking embarrassed. “Anything for a friend, right?” </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>She was red faced, eyes swollen and tight, and she reached out and brushed a lock of hair from Judy’s face and wrapped it around her finger. The touch was light as a feather and so cool, and Judy held her breath, lest she disturb this newfound visitor. “You’re so pretty, Judy,” Jen was saying. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Jen, no—”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“I mean it. You’re so gorgeous. You’re like a little doll.” They were on their sides facing each other, Jen’s red-rimmed celadon eyes deep as a pool, and she could not look away. “Your skin is perfect—“ she paused, and seemed about to say something, and thought the better of it. “You’re my best friend, Judy.” </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>She already knew that, but the confession seemed to have new weight now, spoken in this way, in this place. Jen’s thumb slid down the side of her face and over her lips and she did not dare to breathe. She thought for a moment Jen was going to kiss her, and she hoped for it beyond anything she could remember hoping for at this point in her adult life, but Jen did not, and that little moment between them passed, unremarked upon, into the hindsight of their lives. </span>
</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0004"><h2>4. On The Road</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>the chapter where this fic finally earns its M rating, ha.</p><p>as always, thanks to tara christinaapplegay (who has a really wonderful wip going, btw) for looking over this for me!</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <em>
    <span>Come steppin' down the stairs, Pretty Peggy-O</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Come steppin' down the stairs, combin’ back your yellow hair</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Bid a last farewell to your William-O. </span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>The Dead had never played Peggy-O in a studio, but Abe had a bootleg cassette of some live show in Albuquerque or Idaho or something, and he doesn’t mind her borrowing. She gets off work and lies on her back in bed, smoking a cigarette or a blunt and watching the vapour rise. Usually when she gets home she’s too tired to do anything but take off her bra and crawl in bed on top of the covers, maybe play some music to give her mind something to do. If she was Jane Fonda, she thought, she could walk around braless and not give a shit. She’d cut her hair in a crazy little shag and stomp across the city all day in big shoes and not take anything from anybody. But she’s not Jane Fonda, she’s Judy Hale, and she works ten hour shifts at a job that makes her so tired she feels sick.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>She loves people, but she always seems to say the wrong thing, and worrying about it all the time—what words to say and how to hold herself and how to make the right face—these things tire her out more than standing on her feet. Waitressing is one thing, but then she has to talk to the girls in the back, and they always seem to talk shit about someone or something she’s never heard of, and sometimes it feels like she has two jobs—the one she’s actually paid for, and making sure the other waitresses like her so they don’t steal her tips. Her tastes run a little too weird for Chippewa and she knows it, on top of her unfortunate tendency to blurt things out sometimes, and the stress of acting normal all day takes her out for hours at a time. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>At least she has Jerry Garcia, she thinks, his crackly lugubrious voice like a balm to her as he sings the song that is becoming the song of her life, where the sailor’s too poor for that beautiful blonde haired girl.  </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>She didn’t know exactly when her hand ended up between her legs. She had, she supposed, been resting it on her hip, feeling the rise of hip bone, the soft incline of her stomach, and it had journeyed imperceptibly downward, the natural continuation of a gesture. Judy came of age in the 70s, and a part of her still believes in free love and women’s lib, believes that you don’t need to have a reason to get yourself off, but it’s simple reverse psychology. She tells herself not to, and of course she thinks of Jen. She’d felt so good in her arms that night, when Jen had carried her like a maiden over mud. She remembered now all the little details of Jen’s body, the soft breasts that had crushed against Judy’s bicep and then her chest, the scrim of eiderdown feathering her shoulder, her athlete’s arms which were soft but strong, the weight and heat of her, the skunky-sweet girl smell of weed and perfume and sweat. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>If she was Jen’s lover, she thought, she would press kisses up and down her arms. She would get on her knees and lift the hem of her shirt and kiss the sweet moleskin swathe of her stomach, and down, past the cloud of tangled hair, and kiss her there, too, and stick out her tongue and taste her, and know the smell that came from that place. It would never, ever happen, but it was pleasant to think about, as she touched herself, and wondered if Jen ever touched herself like that too, on her back and thinking about someone exquisite and unreachable in the firmament of her life. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Or maybe she’s one of those girls whose never had an orgasm, doesn’t even know what it is. For all her pugnacity, Jen really is just a little rich girl, pretty, financially stable, unremarkably Saxon, the kind of person who gets a summer job to build character, and Ted hardly strikes her as an attentive lover. Maybe before everything she was a Daddy’s girl, and she got all As, took a chastity vow, and went to church. She’d like to be the one to give Jen her first orgasm, to look up from the pungent wetness between her thighs and see her eyes gleaming, a look of wonder on her face. </span>
  <em>
    <span>Oh Judy,</span>
  </em>
  <span> she’d say, legs spread, nipples hard on her swollen pink tipped breasts. </span>
  <em>
    <span>How can I ever repay you?</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Judy’s hand slides faster between her thighs. She certainly has a few ideas. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>The orgasm is small, but she’s really wet, and when it’s over she thinks she knows why Christians say masturbation is a sin. She has never felt this guilty for anything, except her mom, but that’s different—not for shoplifting, not for breaking up with Nick, not for the bird she ran over with her car. She feels like she’s violated Jen somehow, like she spied on her or watched a secret sex tape or stole her underwear from the laundromat.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>And now she’d be stuck in a van with her for the better part of a month. Just her luck. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>*** </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>They’d had the tour planned for months, but it was Jen who had convinced them to take on Judy last minute, mainly because she was the only one among them who knew anything about van maintenance. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>She’d been apprehensive at first, watching them watch her, knowing they assumed her automotive prowess came from having lived in one, and knowing they were at least partially right. They were rich kids, she was the underprivileged loner—Jen’s friend, they called her, as in, </span>
  <em>
    <span>oh, you’re Jen’s friend, right? </span>
  </em>
  <span>She told herself she would miss Chippewa, that she couldn’t leave Abe in the lurch, but he just grinned at her. </span>
  <em>
    <span>Go on, Judy, follow the music</span>
  </em>
  <span>. Then her last excuse was that she needed the money, and then even that disappeared, too. Jen had managed to convince Ted to pay her, really pay her, to drive the van and serve as an emergency mechanic, provided she helped with the merch table sometimes. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Whatever the burger place is paying you, we’ll pay you two bucks more. An hour.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>She’d stared, wide eyed. “Are you sure?” </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Course. Ted’s mother’s made of money, she’s like, the biggest realtor in Chippewa, and she can’t stand the thought of someone drinking and driving any vehicle her precious son’s inside.” </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“So you’re paying me to be the designated driver?” </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“And my emotional support person. Come on, Judy! I won’t go without you, you know. I told Ted that, and he said he wouldn’t go without </span>
  <em>
    <span>me—</span>
  </em>
  <span>he thinks I’ll cheat on him when he’s gone, and if he doesn’t go Lorna will never forgive me.” </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Jen’s eyes are huge, beseeching, like she really thinks Judy can say no. Not when Jen needs her, when she says things like </span>
  <em>
    <span>I won’t go without you. </span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>So she’ll be sober on a month-long van tour with her ex, a bunch of rockers and the woman she’s secretly in love with. So she’ll probably sleep in weird motels and get hit on by guys in truck stops and miss her last chance to see Chippewa in August, to camp by the river after blackfly season, in that last burst of phosphorescent green before winter. She’s had jobs that were much, much worse. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>*** </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>When she woke, Jen said they were in Anaheim, a place she did not fully believe was real. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>She had driven them to the venue and fallen asleep almost immediately, waking hours later with a crick in her neck and dusk already come. The night air was clean and sad outside the window, a single streetlamp blooming its light over the dark haunches of paused automobiles. She sat up and stretched. Someone, most likely Jen, had had the decency to move her into the reclining back seat. She always had a strange sense of melancholy when she woke up from a nap, and was grateful for Jen’s presence with her now, for that small act of human goodwill buoying her against the night. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“What time is it?” she said. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Late.” Judy shot her a look. “A little after nine.” </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Oh, fuck.” She’d slept later than she thought. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“It’s okay, I told Ted he could do his own fucking merch table, for once.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Jen and Ted had gotten back together the night of that disastrous party, only to break up three days into the tour, in a shouting match so well paced and articulate it felt rehearsed and, given their spotty romantic history, essentially had been. Jen has been clingy ever since, and now she makes her way over to Judy’s seat and climbs on top, the hot crux of her thighs against Judy’s knee, and Judy shivers and tries not to shiver, the sudden heat a star beam in her, making her giggle. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Where are we, again?”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Anaheim.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“What’s in Anaheim?” </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>They’d both gotten closer on the road, even after that night at the house party, where they’d held each other on Judy’s bed and Jen had carried her in her arms. Jen likes to dance on her when she’s drunk, rolling her forehead against Judy’s shoulder, and she calms down Jen when she gets mad, touching her shoulders, her hands, her face. In the motels they stay at, they share a single bed and fall asleep with their whole bodies touching. This physicality is nothing new between them, but she feels moved by it nonetheless. She has awoken into a strange new city, outside of time, and it feels like anything could happen. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Disneyland, Judy.” Does Jen feel it too? Her voice is so low, almost a whisper, and she stumbles a little on Judy’s name, voice gruff and teasing in the way it is only in occasions of embarrassment or greatest tenderness. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Oh, Disneyland. Duh.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“And Ted’s gig. They’re on soon. Right now they’re doing soundcheck.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“You let me sleep in an empty van in the middle of a parking lot?”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Nah, I’ve been here the whole time. I thought you needed your rest.” </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>She says this so nonchalantly, as if sitting for hours in an overpacked, putrid van is something anyone would do. </span>
  <em>
    <span>Anything for a friend, right? </span>
  </em>
  <span>She reneges, embarrassed by the sudden sentiment: “I mean, it’s not like I’ve never heard Ted play some Cream cover before.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Jen is so close to her, all leather and pent up frustration and edgy heat, and Judy feels something uncoiling in her, a quick, eager tugging, as if she was being pulled to the very edge of herself. She knew what it meant—she had waited for this feeling to come with Nick and it hadn’t, that feeling she’d had the first few times she’d touched herself in the bathtub, with the door locked and the drawer on the cabinet pushed all the way out too, just in case, back when it was her secret, when sex was something new and exciting, because no one did it yet, and no one even knew what it really was. She’d thought it had died in her, that it could exist no more except in fantasy, and she was grateful for the feeling, for the hot seam of denim against her leg, just because it meant it wouldn’t be lost forever. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>She could feel herself flushing and she turned her head away, out of the path of Jen’s gaze, which seemed to emit a tangible magnetism intense as heat. She knew she needed to clear her head, and intended her gaze towards the shadowy bulk of the front seat and the dashboard beyond it, objects which seemed to her now to be such clean uncomplicated things, free from the tangle of confusing human pheromones. Then Jen had taken her chin and pressed their mouths together, and she’d felt surreal, half-floating, like her body was a shaken up snowglobe with tiny silver stars raining down inside. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>It was hard to believe she was kissing Jen Harding. Her kisses were velvet light, inimitably sweet, and she let out little gasps, tiny longing sounds that Judy had never heard a woman make, and which seemed to her the most delicious sounds in all creation. She was surrounded all over by Jen’s smell, that lovely smell she had never forgotten, the cigarettes and the perfume she wore to cover the cigarettes, a hint of the cut-grass smell of her armpits, zing of hairspray in her long pale hair. Their torsos pressed together and drove downwards, their hands hardscrabble at each other’s backs, and strands of hair migrated to each other’s mouths. Judy had never been more aroused in her life. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Neither of them had known what they were doing, and Jen had touched her, gotten her legs apart and slid a hand inside her jeans. </span>
  <em>
    <span>This okay? </span>
  </em>
  <span>Judy nodded. She had a flash of mortification at her choice of pink cotton underwear, and then she was being stroked, roughly, with graceless determined fingers that slipped around inside her. She could barely move or cry out, already wet and pounding from the first touch, the sensation more intense than anything she’d experienced up to that point in her life. She knew only what her body knew in that instant: that this, out of everything sexual she’d ever done, was finally right, that it was good, and that she wanted more. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Jen was determined, her jaw locked, muscles jumping in her arm, her eyes fixed on a spot that was not Judy but beyond Judy, through a point on her forehead into the dark. She wore the same expression she had on when she made up her mind to get what she wanted, and now this was what she wanted, Judy pounding and whimpering and clenching around her hand, her body bounding after that slick pleasure like a rabbit over rolling hills, the two of them twined together in their all-absorbing focus on that one crucial goal. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>The orgasm was abrupt, almost brutal. Most of her self-made orgasms were unremarkable, just little surges of pleasure that barely even reached a crest, but this one was unmistakable, unbounded, everything in her body flung wildly loose from its tethers. After Jen had looked at her and said: fuck, Judy, in a husky voice she couldn’t parse, and then she’d left her there, spread out and panting, and gone out for a smoke. The wetness had lingered between her thighs for the rest of the night, a strange, jelly-like feeling that got cold fast, and later when she peed in the dingy bar bathroom she found her panties were soaked, a blush of deep mauve against the pink. </span>
</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0005"><h2>5. But When I’m Bad I’m Better</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>two chapters in one update! well, this chapter is basically just sex, and I felt like it should be read in close proximity to the other one, because they happen within hours of each other. I'm also at the point where I've read over everything so many times and my brain is telling me to post it and be done with it instead of worrying about every little thing. so I'm just posting this and hoping everything turned out ok. </p><p>As always, thanks to tara for editorial assistance.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>A part of her dreaded the motel room that night, because she knew they’d have to share a bed, and even worse, that they’d have to face each other, the length of the other’s unclothed body inches away in sleep, and have to reckon with themselves. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>They usually flipped for first shower, but tonight she forfeited, too anxious to see her body naked after what had happened. Jen slipped into the bathroom and stayed there for a long time, and Judy opened </span>
  <em>
    <span>East of Eden </span>
  </em>
  <span>and turned on the television and tried to think of anything but this, now. A small eternity passed, Jen came out of the bathroom in her big T-shirt, drying her hair, and they paused for a moment, and looked at each other. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Jen,” she said, stupidly, a futile invocation in the face of what had just transpired between them. But she said it anyway, floated it across the room like a peace offering, a catalyst for whatever may come. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Jen ignored it. She tried again. “Jen, are we”—</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Are we what? Are we going to talk about what just happened? Are we going to talk about the fact you just fingered me in the backseat of Ted’s van like it was the most normal thing in the world, and now we have to share a bed, and I can’t stop remembering you? </span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Shhhh,” Jen said. She wore a strange expression, naked and vulnerable on her face, mouth half open. She seemed to be making up her mind about something. Then she crossed the room and sat astride Judy, and said “shhh, Judy. Don’t say anything, okay? Just look at me.” She brought a single finger to Judy’s lips, and Judy felt her breath still, and Jen kissed her again. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>It was just miraculous as their first kiss, but slower, more assured. Jen was rolling her hips with a measured directness that Judy figured was probably practiced, and she had a little burst of joy at being someone Jen considered important enough to impress. They fell back against the bed and she surrendered herself, utterly, the way she had before, let Jen take her wrists and pull them above her head and grind against her, every inch of her body crying out with arousal, aching a little at the sweetness of it, the surreal impossibility of Jen’s hand creeping under the hem of her shirt. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>She found a breast and squeezed, and Judy felt both of her nipples harden in response. Her body never had been this responsive during sex, nor had she got aroused this fast, and when Jen’s teeth closed around her nipple she could not help herself and let out a long, broken cry, arching again into Jen’s waiting mouth. Every inch of her was covered in the most delicious fire, and when Jen took her hand and guided it under her shirt she felt her mind go white. Jen’s breasts were impossibly soft, and they seemed both smaller and heavier than she expected, her nipples hard buds under Judy’s touch, and they dragged ever so lightly across her stomach as Jen kissed her way down Judy’s torso, towards that aching, throbbing place. Then, in a moment so exquisite she thought she might have dreamed it, she felt Jen’s mouth between her legs, the rough little strokes of her tongue, the cocooning impossible wetness of come and spit. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>All propriety was abandoned now, and she was begging, now, begging Jen to let her come, hoping against hope she wouldn’t say something stupid like jeez Louise or golly or gadzooks. There wasn’t much of a rhythm, but the combined effort of her hips and the sheer fact of Jen’s tongue between her legs was enough, and soon she was coming hard, thrusting herself into Jen’s mouth. Then Jen’s hand took over and she came again, and a third time, gasping, whimpering, making little animal sounds that were entirely unlike the sounds she’d made with boys, long, smooth-as-molasses moans. These were practically torn out of her, along a refrain of </span>
  <em>
    <span>please, Jen, please</span>
  </em>
  <span> that tumbled out with all the rest. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>The fourth time Jen rolled her over and got her on all fours, hovered her hand in the air long enough for Judy to understand what she meant, and nod her assent, and then she struck her, again and again, until she was raw pink and stinging, begging to come. With some difficulty Jen flipped her around and managed to slip a finger inside her, and she fucked her that way, Judy’s pussy sucking around her hand, pulling her finger back in. She came from that, feeling raw and debauched, sobbing shamelessly, and collapsed on the bed. The moment of flashpoint had activated every muscle in her body, and when it passed she lay there spent, fluid and shivery like a greyhound, the aftershock of orgasm still throbbing in her.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>When she recovered herself, she became aware of Jen, who was naked and touching herself in the bed beside her, and she gathered all her strength and kissed her and felt that beautiful, wide set limber body under hers. “Please, Jen,” she whispered. “Please let me touch you,” and Jen relented, said “touch me, touch me Judy,” and she did, thrust her fingers into the wet tangle and rubbed as best she could until she felt a shudder that lasted longer than the others, and Jen, chest heaving, her eyelids screwed closed, said, “yeah, like that,” and nudged her hips again into Judy’s hand. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>When she finally lowered her head between Jen’s legs she thought she might cry. She was wet from two orgasms, the smell of her rich and heady, come on her thighs. She stuck out her tongue and skated it down the length of Jen’s lips and felt her whole body shiver, hand leaping into Judy’s hair and holding tight, like a girl on a bolting pony, as though her body might get away from her if she did not hold on. Jen was slick, and she tasted like salt, tufts of her hair frosted into little damp peaks against Judy’s nose, and she licked and licked, driving herself into Jen’s center, losing herself in the rhythm of it like a runner, and when Jen came, with the most exquisite sound Judy had ever heard, she felt the throb of it in herself, too. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>They collapsed like that, and she summoned the last of her strength and pulled herself against the length of Jen’s body, resting her head against her breast. They had both experienced something indescribable, something probably unthinkable to both of them before now, and someone how their tryst had heightened, not extinguished, her need for closeness. They caught their breath; Jen swiped a finger between her legs and sucked on it experimentally, and Judy kissed her nipple. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>The sex had lasted hours. Both of them had come again and again and now it was over they lay, raw, sweaty and giggly, a little out of nervousness, but mostly at their own audacity, at the things they had just done that they had no words for. She had not showered yet, and Jen was so sweaty and wet that she might as well shower again, so they stood under the water together, kissing each other, Jen rubbing shampoo in her hair. It was one of the most exquisite moments of her life, so tender and beautiful she thought she could cry from it, from being so loved. They slept naked together, holding each other, Jen’s breasts against her ribcage, her pubic hair downy soft against the apex of Judy’s hip. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>She had the sense that her life had become something out of fiction, a strange miraculous fantasy life that she might float through like a feather, and she woke, naked, her body sore, suffused in the impossible reality of what was really only a scarce handful of hours earlier. Jen was awake already, smoking on the walkway in Ted’s boxers and her big shirt, and she dressed and walked out to stand beside her, as though to say, </span>
  <em>
    <span>I’m here</span>
  </em>
  <span>, </span>
  <em>
    <span>it’s okay. </span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>She wasn’t exactly sure what she expected Jen to do, certainly not a kiss, not here, in broad daylight, where everyone would see, but some touch, a hug, a little look, a nod of acknowledgement, something besides her stinging gluteus maximus and the little pink love marks on her breasts to confirm that it hadn’t been a dream. But there was nothing. Jen just glanced at her and, ever so slightly, shifted her arm away, so they wouldn’t touch. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Judy knew that behavior. It was how people acted around her as a kid when she came to school in secondhand clothes, or when she’d been in public with Eleanor during one of her lower moments, when she’d had that hazy unfocused look in her eye, or even when she’d been in public with Nick, and people had shot them a glance and shifted away. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Jen,” she said. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Jen’s face was a mask, and when she turns Judy already knows what she’s gonna say—knows it’s over, that it will never, ever be invoked between them. Even though she still had the memory, minted fresh, of Jen’s mouth on every part of her body, even though Jen had peeled off her shirt and said </span>
  <em>
    <span>god, Jude, your fucking tits</span>
  </em>
  <span>, though her voice had cracked, a roughness in her throat almost like emotion when she’d looked up, head between Judy’s legs, and said </span>
  <em>
    <span>you’re so wet</span>
  </em>
  <span>—Judy knows. She doesn’t even need Jen, who, in a moment will turn to her and say in her taut voice </span>
  <em>
    <span>I can’t, Judy, I’m sorry, I just can’t, </span>
  </em>
  <span>who an hour later will climb into Ted’s lap at the breakfast place and kiss him, to tell her that. </span>
</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0006"><h2>6. Don’t Go Where I Can’t Follow</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Just going to say it right outta the gate. MAJOR and I mean major time jump in this. I was gonna apologize but you know what I don’t care cause this is MY fic and I get to choose the timeline. Personally I really think both the characters needed time to grow into their adult selves a little and any relationship they could have had in their 20s couldn’t be healthy for either of them. So here we go. </p><p>Thank you to everyone for your lovely comments! I keep telling myself I’m going to respond to them all and then I never do but they’re seen and appreciated.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>“There was a wall in him that no one reached. Not even Clara, though she assumed it had deformed him. A tiny stone swallowed years back that had grown with him and which he carried around because he could not shed it.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Michael Ondaatje, </span>
  <em>
    <span>In the Skin of a Lion.</span>
  </em>
  
</p><p>
  <br/>
  <br/>
</p><p>
  <span>When it’s your mother, two years is nothing, and Judy knows that. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>There had been a particular anguish in Jen when Judy had known her, a thin hard line in her like a shriek. She’d had this way of growing quiet when she thought no one could see, but Judy always saw--slipping out at a party’s zenith for a cigarette or turning her head towards a dark window, a quiet tunnelling into herself, as if she had dropped a blind down between her and everyone and made the whole world disappear. Judy knew that feeling, and she’d always tried to comfort her, sitting in silence until whatever happened passed, catching Jen’s eye to show her that she understood. They’d grown apart after that night on the tour, and she knew Jen would suffer for it, in the same way she had suffered, because they both fed off each other, giving strength to the other, and growing stronger in return. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>She had moved around a lot after college and eventually settled in California, teaching drip painting and Bob Ross landscapes to preschoolers and senior citizens with her Art Ed degree. She likes her job, because it meant working with some of the most helpless and ill-regarded demographics in society, the people that no one ever listened to, but Judy listens, and they love her for it. Still no baby, but she thinks she’s come as close as she’s ever going to get to blossoming—she loves the purposefulness of her new world, its gentle routines, the neat satisfaction of having found a job making art when everyone told her she wouldn’t. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>She loves her new home, too, the strange geology of it, the volcanic suggestion of forest fires in summer like doomsday come. After work she drives home and smells the bougainvillaea on the night air. She coasts her hand out the window, loving everyone she passes:  a pair of hikers on their shimmery bicycles, a girl in a baseball jersey walking a white golden retriever, a flock of daycare kids in their matching yellow shirts. In California there is Grauman’s Chinese theatre with the handprints in cement, ancient hippies on Haight street, reminding her of Abe, the rose bowl flea. In the suburbs people raise chickens and orange trees in their backyards. In the cities people eat tofu, make movies and tip their necks up to the moon. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>She can hide here, no longer Judy Hale who came to school in the secondhand clothes, but someone else, her skin growing olive in the sun, her calves firm and strong from San Francisco hills. If someone from Chippewa saw her, she thought, they’d never imagine—not in a million years. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>She thinks she has managed to expunge the spectre of Jen in her, tells herself that chapter of her life is over, that she’s not coming back. She hears about Jen and Ted years after the fact, news from an old high school friend, and only sometimes does she allow herself to wonder, briefly, where Jen is now—on the road as a rocker’s wife, maybe, or upper-middle class, genteel in a big white house with a brood of well scrubbed kids—and if she’s happy. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>***</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>It’s through the same friend that she finds out what happened to Ted. It’s months after it happened, and she’s already missed the funeral, but a quick internet search yields Jen’s real estate business and an email address. She bangs out a short, awkward missive, just saying that she’s sorry, asking if Jen wants to meet up, not really expecting a reply, but her mailbox dings just ten minutes later. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Hi, Judy. Yes, it’s been a while. Thanks for saying that about Ted. I’d like to see you again, how’s next week?</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>When she saw Jen in the Laguna Beach restaurant, rising from her chair in a black blazer and slacks, she’d had the sense that the transformation she’d seen the beginning of in Chippewa had reached its logical conclusion. Jen’s grief had never healed over—it had remained like a jagged edge in her just beneath the skin, and she looks older, although that’s to be expected, more solvent, a new tautness in her movements and a brittleness in how she speaks. Jen who had shotgunned beers and spat at a bouncer once, who had laughed when Judy walked in on her and Ted </span>
  <em>
    <span>in flagrante delicto</span>
  </em>
  <span>, dry humping to the Stones at some house party—all traces of that have been expunged from her person. Judy sees her and can’t contain the little rush of love she feels, even after so many years, despite the way Jen has been eroded within an inch of herself, or maybe because of it. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>***</span>
</p><p>
  <span>For years she’d been living with this guy named Steve, an elfin-faced plutocrat who’d made big money in the dot-com boom. But then there was miscarriage number five, and it had drove a wedge between them, and for the past few months she’s been staying in the old folks home she works at while she looks for another place. She says this over lunch, and she watches Jen’s eyes widen, and her mouth go: </span>
  <em>
    <span>oh, well if you need one, we have a place to stay. </span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Judy has a way of getting into capital-S Situations, of overriding everything around her that screams stop and plunging full speed ahead. It’s dangerous—she trusts too much, and forgives too easily, the slightest hint of kindness enough to make her love someone forever, the faintest hint of rejection enough to break her heart. Maybe that’s how she ends up in Jen’s guesthouse, cooking pancakes for Jen and Ted’s children and drinking expensive liquor out of the cabinet like some kind of kept woman.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>It’s strange to think that these kids—her family— have a part of Ted in them, to recognize him in a mannerism or an angle of their face, even stranger to think of Ted as a father. They’re both interested when they hear she knew Ted and Jen before, that’s what they say, before, in that strange tenuous half formed time preceding their own birth. She knows no one really believes that time is real—they think they were born and the world started ticking—but she regales them with tales of the road, mostly embellished, attributing to their father qualities she’d admired in others to hide the fact she hadn’t thought Ted had any positive attributes at all. Even Charlie is enthralled, and she notices Jen watching her one day, leaning against a doorjamb just out of sight. She tenses, anticipating the possibility of confrontation between them, but Jen is listening too, a wistful expression on her face that Judy thinks is tenderness. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>There’s still a connection between them, a hot touchy physicality she recognizes now as attraction. It’s strange, to be back here with Jen as a sexually mature woman, a queer woman, her fully-realized sexuality codifying all of those small touches. But she hesitates now—they both do, like dogs before an earthquake, sensing the magnitude of the thing before them, knowing they will not emerge from it unchanged. What’s between her and Jen is too crucial, too immense to do the wrong way. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>*** </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Abe died in ‘89, only a handful of years after she left Chippewa, but his family has been looking for her ever since. His son is his spitting image, a stooped man well into his seventies who takes her in his arms, standing up to embrace her in his beige colored California living room. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“He was really fond of you,” he said. “He told me about you, you know. He said you were going places.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>This is what Abe had left for her: a couple hundred dollars in a little wooden cash box, an ancient, fossilized joint, and the Peggy-O cassette, label worn off from use, wrapped in a little white envelope. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>It takes her a while to find the appropriate technology to play it—everything now is CDs and floppy discs—but eventually she unearths a prehistoric Walkman at a pawn shop. When she hears the opening bars, still so familiar seventeen years later, she sobs for the first time in a long time, really sobs, cries until her body is utterly spent. She had always thought of Jen as the repressed one, the one with the wall in her, but she has one too, and it’s been there for a long, long time. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>***</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Jen’s not young anymore, and she isn’t, either. Back when they’d known each other, they’d put their bodies through egregious abuse, staying out all night on a bender or a one night stand and working a full shift the next day and somehow staying on their feet. She’d marched for AIDS and got pepper sprayed by cops, she’d pulled all nighters in college, and even after college, she’d subsisted on a diet of weed and wine and boxed Mac and cheese, and one year she’d been so broke that she’d biked everywhere, even in winter. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>That reality is no longer. Their bodies are aging, just beginning to fall apart. Jen’s there when she finds out about early onset menopause, and she, in a temporary abandonment of her senses, offers to rub Jen’s bad back. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>It’s the first time they’ve really touched since that night, the night that will forever be That Night for her, and maybe for Jen too. Almost twenty years have passed, and the world is different now—Bush in office, that plane hitting the twin towers, AIDS, medicine for AIDS, cell phones, Y2K, whale tails, troops in Iraq—but she’s never felt anything close to what Jen made her feel for anyone, and a part of her knows Jen hasn’t either. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>She knows a decent amount about massages, and she loses herself in that for a while, kneading the tightness out of Jen’s broad, smooth back. Jen’s body has changed since Judy saw her, although that’s to be expected, but she still feels enthralled by her, giggly and nervous as she had been at twenty, at the length of Jen’s torso which had disappeared so tantalizingly under her clothes like a long, tan river. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>She doesn’t know quite what possesses her, but she leans down and, with exaggerated precision, presses a kiss to the middle of Jen’s back, in that spot between her shoulder blades, right in the gully of her spine. Jen’s skin is warm and smooth, and she smells different now, less like nicotine and more like rich lady, a musky floral scent that struck Judy as much less appealing than bath and body works, and therefore must be ridiculously expensive. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Jen lay there, still, silent, naked up above the waist. She let out a slow breath. She had not reacted to the kiss, but she did not push Judy away either. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>They hung there, in that tight silence, their bodies remembering. She flashes to: red scratches on Jen’s back, the smell of motel shampoo that jumps forward across all those years. Yes still. </span>
</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>yes, i know Harding is technically Jen's married name, but given she's the main character, I thought she deserved the appellation more than Ted. or maybe they both have the same last name (no relation, ofc) and just happen to get married to each other. it's fanfiction, people.</p></blockquote></div></div>
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